Heya KJ... don't get stuck at GIG, Rio's international airport, unless you are able to enjoy the luxuries of the Admiral's Club - yikes, what an ugly and old terminal, not to mention that just about everything is closed and super-boring here. Well, time to update the blog. Maracana on Sunday wasn't nearly as impressive as I expected it to be like; yes, there were a few samba drums and dancing girls but nothing compared to the lunacy at a Boca Juniors game in Buenos Aires, if you ask me. The evening made up for it, though: The fabulous trio took a whole bunch of us out to Baronetti, the current hot spot of luxury night life in Ipanema - now *that* was an eye-candy palace, I must say! Too much cachaca, as always in Rio, so the return home at 6ish in the morning was kind of blurry, but what a tough life if you can relax all day at Poste 9 on Ipanema beach! The young, the rich, the beautiful - in short, the most impressive bikini catwalk you will ever get to witness in your life. Spent Monday doing some more touristy stuff and took the old rumbling bondinho street car from the city center to the Santa Teresa neighborhood. One more night out, and today I am back on my way to EZE - via SCL. Yeah... five days relaxing in the nightlife of Buenos Aires and at *home* before heading back into the snow of Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica.

Yowza KJ... summer time again!!! Have not been able to sleep much since my arrival here in Rio de Janeiro three days ago. San Francisco what!?!? I think *this* is the most beautiful city on earth... Cidade Maravilhosa as the carioca call it. Spent my daytime visiting the tourist stuff so far... Sugar Loaf at sunset, Christ Redeemer on top of the Corcovador (yes, I did take the rumbling cog train through the rain forest!), and beaches beaches beaches - I am staying right smack in the middle of the sand-and-surf action, in Copacabana, right on the beach. Drool drool drool... never seen so much dental floss separating thousands of nicely tanned and beach volleyball-tuned cheeks! Couldn't believe that Caipirinhas are cheapest at A Garota de Ipanema, the bar where Morais and Jobim wrote that famous song that started it all - made a few friends and got wonderfully wasted on prime-quality cachaca! Plenty of fresh and exotic fruit juices to pep you up the next morning here, whenever that is. I am back inside the tropic of capricorn and the climate tells... frigging humid here and 35/93 degrees here throughout the day, sunshine or not. Taking the overnighter to Florianopolis later today, back to Rio on Saturday - no way I will miss that football game at the Maracana stadium!

Hola Sr. Frog - back in Bs.As. tonight after a whirlwind tour of Patagonia this week. Flew into this outpost of civilization called El Calafate and immediately went on to a day trip to the Perito Moreno glacier. Holy fucking cow!!! I thought I had seen my glaciers back in Switzerland but this one is a way more impressive sight to watch - a 30 km long and 4 km wide advancing icefield continuously calving new icebergs from its 60 meters high front. The impact of the icebergs when hitting the lake water below cannot be described... what a roaring thunder, as if a mortar shell hits the ground and explodes! Wait until you see those pictures... Next day for 5 hours over the infamous gravel and pothole-infested Route 40 to an even tinier outpost of human settlements, El Chalten: Self-declared trekking capital of Argentina and (they think) the world. Got my workout during a 7-hour hike to and back from Cerro Fitz Roy the next morning, one of those picturesque mountain ranges that are a Garden Eden for postcard sales people. Same evening back the afore-mentioned 5-hour ride to El Calafate, only to immediately get up again at 5am (!!!) to go for another 5 hours over dirt roads in a Land Rover to Chile and its fabulous national park Torres del Paine. Here came my next boink, boink, boink moment: You should see the herds of guanacos running around all over ther roads! Yes, I do have pictures, and I even caught a grey fox fletching his teeth at me only 2 meters away! Not to mention all these funny-looking newborn lambs - just too funny how their tails dangle when these poodle-looking creatures run for cover... More Kodak moments in the park: Wonderful trekking, huge waterfalls, another glacier field with icebergs on a seasonal beach, just simply amazing nature everywhere. And I even got to see my first two condors in the wild!!! Enough of the cold trekking world for now... tomorrow its Brazil... samba, Rio de Janeiro, beaches, Florianopolis, and just being lazy for 10 days!

More from Rapa Nui - what a wonderful experience... after two days you can recognize almost every face you see on the street and today, after five days here, almost every local waives a greeting of hola or iorana when I walk by. The first days seem to leave an impression of poverty around the island but the longer one stays the more amazed one will be how happy these people truly are... no worries here (Bush who?). The food doesn't have a lot of variation but what they do is yummy... especially the Ceviche, lemon-marinated raw tuna. After my dives yesterday I watched local fishermen prepare the fresh catch of the day at the pier - quite a bloody affair to separate a monstrous tuna from its head and stomach (yes, I do have pictures!). Speaking of diving here - huge coral reefs and an amazing variety of underwater landscape, some caves, and a few strange-looking fish. Oh yes, huge turtles!!! Amazing how these plump animals can look so graceful when swimming underwater. Back via SCL to EZE tomorrow, then immediately south to El Calafate on Sunday.

Today, an extremely happy Iorana Korua from Rapa Nui ("Hello everybody from Easter Island"). Christmas - or Easter, so to speak - came almost two months early for me this year... I have finally made it and can now proudly put the crown jewel of true globetrotters into my traveling resume: I arrived on Isla de Pascua, the most isolated and remote place on earth. Over 3700 kilometers from South America, over 4100 kilometers from Tahiti - nowhere on this planet is one further away from populated areas, including the polar regions. The nearest island is even tinier Pitcairn, about 1700 kilometers to the west, of Mutiny on the Bounty fame - the paradise where Fletcher Christian and his men found refuge (it is not permanently populated these days). Getting here is an adventure in itself, a challenge of luck and one's wallet. LanChile's 11-hour Santiago-to-Papeete/Tahiti flight makes a stopover here once or twice a week, depending on the season - being able to actually make a reservation is a different story, as discount fares, RTW seats or mileage award spots are virtually unavailable. From brightest sunshine and sweltering heat to torrential rainfalls - my first day had it all. Went on a hike to stand next to some of the famous moai, huge sculptures carved out of a volcano mountain's side and mysteriously transported by the Long Ears and Short Ears to their ceremonial ahu sites. Sunset coloring these monoliths was amazing, with the tropic clouds constantly changing the shades of purple, yellow, blue and orange. Steering a 4x4 through red lava mud can be quite challenging but I never got stuck so far. Anakena beach and its Thor Heyerdahl moai today, then two days of scuba diving... woohoo!!!

Short-term schedule:

10/27-10/31 Bariloche and San Martin de los Andes The Lake District in the mountains.
11/01-11/01 Santiago de Chile Just a first brief visit... more in December.
11/02-11/08 Rapa Nui (Isla de Pascua... a.k.a. Easter Island) The most remote archipelago on earth.
11/09-11/14 El Calafate Awesome Perito Moreno glacier and much more.
11/15-11/25 Rio de Janeiro And a side trip to Florianopolis.
11/29-12/14 Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica Well, we'll see about that.

Yowzadlidoo Mr. Kermit - what a busy 11 days since I last wrote. Safely returned from the Andes on another marathon bus trip before diving head first into... Washbear week!!! (inside joke, I know) Another River Plate game on Sunday, another 17-hour bus ride - this time to the spectacular Cataratas de Iguazu, one of the seven natural wonders of this earth. Absolutely breathtaking waterfalls, from the frightening Garganta de Diablo (Devil's Throat) main falls, to the Bossetti Falls and the San Martin Falls with its crazy power boats riding straight into them, to a walk right on top of the rim where the calm water still doesn't know what's going to happen within seconds. Plane ride back, more lomo and even more lomo in Bs.As., and now in Uruguay after a short jet cat ride across the Rio de la Plata. Quiet Colonia del Sacramento is a welcome oasis of silence and enjoys fourth-worldish slow pace after the craziness of BA, not to mention the air-cleaning tropical thunderstorm accompanied by the usual miniscule amount of rainfall to say hello today. Tomorrow Montevideo and back to BA at night.

Hola K... Mendoza. Caught a 13-hour bus from BA last night - nothing to complain about; better than business class on an airliner: Upper deck front row, fully reclining seats (only 3 per row), sherry and wine along with a full dinner, brandy and whiskey to tuck you in while watching a movie - they know how to make you sleep through the night! Some 1,000 kilometers west of BA daylight breaks and the breathtaking snow-capped Andes become visible, still over 200 kilometers away. The volcano Tupungato and the imposing Aconcagua (tallest in America) throne almost 7,000 meters above sea level (that's approaching 23,000 feet for all you SI-challenged) visible from everywhere - that's twice the altitude of most mountains in the Alps! It's Discovery/Columbus Day today, so most businesses are closed and I can explore Mendoza in all its splendor. Completely destroyed by an earthquake in the 19th century, the city was completely rebuilt with sidewalks wider than the streets in most other cities! Everything is lined by exotic trees from all over the world - it somehow feels like a big version of Alice Springs, an oasis within the vinyards of the 4th-largest wine-producing region of the world. Speaking of wine, I thought I start off this week on the proper foot by going on a tour of bodegas and winemakers this afternoon. Tomorrow will be a full-day adventure to the base of Aconcagua, the Puente de Incas and Lago Horcones.

Yowza Mr. K. Jr. - One week in Buenos Aires now. What an amazing place! Don't even know where to start... went to see a Tango show at one of the most classic esquinas in town, attended my first Boca Juniors game, hiked all over Palermo/Recoleta/San Martin/Microcentro/San Telmo, found an apartment, watched River Plate win, and basically went to bed at about 7 am pretty much every day. Oh, did I mention that the diet here is more or less 100% steaks, steaks, and more steaks? Not a problem, though, as the meat quality is impressive. Gonna do the girlie thing and go shopping for shoes these days - with all this beef there's plenty of good leather around here. My apartment rocks... kind of smallish but in one of the best streets of the city in Palermo, on a 9th floor overlooking the zoo and the skyline, very central, full security. Moving in tomorrow - they just completed a full renovation of the place with new paint, new hardwood floors, etc. Should have cable TV, telephone, adress, all that good stuff within a few days.

Springtime Kermit... Isn't life great - some 14 hours by plane and I have another whole spring and summer ahead of me again! Made it to Buenos Aires... have been here for just a few hours but it looks like a fantastic choice: Crystal-clear Monday morning here, streets full of life, everywhere in the city the trees start to show their green leaves and some even blossom, and it is cheap cheap cheap here!!! Pretty cool shit last night, as the flight from Munich was delayed and they had to hold the jumbo in Madrid just for me and one other dude for half an hour. It's 10:30am now and I am ready to begin exploring my home town for the next three months - taking it easy today but tomorrow I will find myself an apartment. Hasta luego!